Mindsets and Motivation
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Strategies for Using Goals to Increase Motivation There are several different types of goals. Goals can be short-term, proximal goals, or long-term, distal goals. Ideally, a student’s short-term goals should provide steps that work toward their long-term goals. Students can also have a mastery orientation where they “define academic success as learning something new” or a performance orientation where they “demonstrate their competence relative to others” (Rowell & Hong, 2013, p. 160). Mastery goals align with the growth mindset and foster internal motivation, whereas performance goals align with the fixed mindset and do not set the stage for internal motivation. Setting short-term mastery goals with frequent opportunities for feedback helps students align their actions with their vision and the results they are hoping for. Classrooms that focus on mastery emphasize effort and give students room to make mistakes, learn, and grow instead of focusing on end results, like grades and test scores.
• The goal is not specific enough. You don’t know how to start or how to determine whether you have achieved it. • The goal is too big, and you cannot accomplish it right now. • You don’t have a plan or a system in place to achieve the goal. Self-assessing allows students to develop an awareness of their current abilities by evaluating themselves on their performance, knowledge, and their actions and attitudes about learning. It can happen during the planning phase and when students are evaluating outcomes. This awareness of strengths and weaknesses makes students capable of setting applicable learning goals. Goals describe the results you want to achieve from learning and are important to the learning process because they guide you in planning, deciding what to direct your effort toward, and determining when to pay attention. Setting clear, specific, and doable goals for learning has a positive effect on student performance in the classroom (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018). Intentionally planning to learn by setting goals affects the effort students put toward their work in the classroom more than any other strategy. Goal setting can determine what students do to learn in the classroom because they gain self-efficacy (or a belief in their own ability) to change their behavior and produce results when they successfully set and work toward short-term goals (Akamatsu et al., 2019).
Setting Goals for Metacognitive Strategy Use (Grades K–12) Students can begin to think about goal setting by looking at their metacognitive strategies inventory (see figure 1.4, page 26) and consider turning red or yellow strategy areas into goals. This activity offers a way for students to analyze the metacognitive strategies they are not currently using and set goals to begin using strategies to increase their learning. Do this activity at the beginning of the year and then once every nine weeks or four times throughout the year. This activity helps students become aware of metacognitive strategies and then focus on which strategies they are currently using and which strategies they need to work on.
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Everyone has had the experience of setting a goal for themselves and then not getting around to it. This can happen for several reasons.
